What am I doing wrong?

[prpinrni]

So this website, Texas State University - San Marcos (TxSt) - Reviews & Rankings, tells you the 4-year-graduation rates of different colleges. The graduation rates are listed at the bottom, and different colleges can be found by typing their name in the search-engine at the top. In the college that's linked, Texas State-San Marcos, it was only 24% of students graduate in 4 years. Now, I've been looking up the ages of people who are upon graduation from these universities with low graduation rates. If the majority of these people take longer than 4 years, than the majority should be older than 22 upon graduating. However, this isn't what I've been finding. Almost everyone I've looked up who went to colleges with supposedly low graduation rates was 21-22 when graduating. What am I doing wrong? Where do I need to be looking to find results to accurately reflect these statistics?

 

[Carson Dyle]

I can tell already you'll go far in life.

 

[Pulsar]

So this website, Texas State University - San Marcos (TxSt) - Reviews & Rankings, tells you the 4-year-graduation rates of different colleges. The graduation rates are listed at the bottom, and different colleges can be found by typing their name in the search-engine at the top. In the college that's linked, Texas State-San Marcos, it was only 24% of students graduate in 4 years. Now, I've been looking up the ages of people who are upon graduation from these universities with low graduation rates. If the majority of these people take longer than 4 years, than the majority should be older than 22 upon graduating. However, this isn't what I've been finding. Almost everyone I've looked up who went to colleges with supposedly low graduation rates was 21-22 when graduating. What am I doing wrong? Where do I need to be looking to find results to accurately reflect these statistics?

I think it's more important to determine why you are so hung up on your college graduation age.

 

[Jaepheth]

I think there are several holes in your logic as described.

First, it seems assumed that the students all start at the same age. If a significant number of students start at age 16 or 17 then they could take 5 or 6 years and still graduate before 23.

Second, I would think those who don't graduate in 4 years includes those who drop out and never graduate at all. That will also effect your average completion age.

Third, there is ambiguity in the terminology. Some students take a sabbatical and put their education on hold. If someone goes to school 2 years, takes a year off, and finishes in another 2 years did they graduate in 4 years or 5? As another example; it doesn't say how or if Dual Credit courses from High school factor into the year count; you can actually go from a high school senior to a college sophomore thanks to those dual credit classes; if someone in that situation takes 4 more years of college then that's the equivalent of 5 years, but only took "4" years at the college.
The data is not going to be useful for rigorous analysis, because the data is not rigorously defined.

 

[shimpster]

contact the school and request their logic for the stats.
if unacceptable to u, get a lawyer and proceed with litigation